


Post Tenebras Lux

by blanchtt



Series: Ignis Aurum Probat [2]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 02:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7784074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth groans, blinks again, hard, and opens her eyes. There, staring down at her, is Mika, mouth a worried frown but eyes shining. Her heart thumps painfully, and if Beth didn’t know better she’d think she were alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post Tenebras Lux

   

 

 

There is no thought, only sensation. And only one. 

 

Pain. 

 

There, always there, and overwhelming. And lucky her - it comes in varieties. There is the hot, aching pain, radiating from the very marrow of her bones, a kind that seems to threaten quite seriously to split them open. There is white pain; sharper, stabbing, acute, the kind that she can hardly close her eyes against, blinded as two men speak over her, a light that comes and goes but mostly goes. And no more merciful than any other kind of pain is the dull throb of hunger, the rake of thirst against her throat, the kind that as the others fade away makes her wonder if _this_ is what’s going to do her in.

 

She can hardly lift her hand to block the light that comes once more, and so the hand that smooths her hair back, the fingers that cradle the base of her skull and tilt her head up, are welcome. She blinks, blurry and scratchy, a dark figure next to her, and is aware of the familiar tight tug of her skin the action brings. She’s got a busted lip for sure, and probably a pretty nasty cut on her eyebrow. 

 

But there’s what feels like the narrow spout of a water bottle pressed to her lips, careful, and she drinks before the water bottle is pulled away, the hands lay her back down. “They’ve been having IT problems,” the figure says, sounding highly amused although no laugh follows her words. “I’m here to look at the servers.”

 

_Mika._

 

Beth groans, blinks again, hard, and opens her eyes. There, staring down at her, is Mika, mouth a worried frown but eyes shining. Her heart thumps painfully, and if Beth didn’t know better she’d think she were alive.

 

“How?” she rasps. How did Mika die, too? Did Evie really follow through? Has everything she’s ever done for them been a waste? She breathes out hard, because wherever the fuck they are Mika shouldn’t be here, and watches Mika’s frown grow deeper.

 

“Rest,” Mika instructs, and Beth almost laughs. As if she can do anything else. Mika slips something in the folds of her skirt, pats her hand, and smiles. “Snacks, for later. I’ll be back the same time tomorrow.”

 

What the hell does she need snacks for? Mika has never withheld anything from her or teased, and she’s never been a religious woman, so Beth has to ask, almost hesitantly, “Is this hell?” 

 

It takes a moment for Mika to burst out laughing, a soft but carefree sound that escapes around the hands she holds up to her mouth, covering up that rare and pretty smile.

 

“No,” she says, as if it’s the most ridiculous question she’s ever heard. “It’s a morgue.”

 

 

-

 

 

Being in a box doesn't scare her. The closeness of the metal walls, the blackness, the quiet. She’s in a drawer, surrounded by a bunch of other drawers with stiffs in them. You get used to them, in her line of work. She's alive, and that’s all that matters. 

 

Whatever it is that needs to be done to pull it off, Mika will get her out. Mika, who kept tabs on her despite her specific instructions to drop it, to stop sniffing around, _god damn it_. Mika, who hacks and lies and gets herself into the morgue and makes a beeline for her and not the servers, with Pocky in her coat pockets to give her to snack on. Mika, who she owes her second life to. 

 

In the total darkness there is no sleep, only drifting in and out of consciousness as Beth waits for the drawer to open, to be pulled out, to go over their plan, their next step. And so she closes her eyes although it makes no difference, really, only that she imagines it’s easier to hear the voices like that. 

 

They’re almost unintelligible, like someone’s speaking just out of earshot, and in a language like English, but not. Frustratingly familiar, and just a hairsbreadth beyond the reach of her grasping fingers. There is Danielle’s voice, murmuring, and she strains to hear it every time, the barrier of French the least of her worries. And there is Katja’s voice, too, Beth had been disappointed to hear, the sharp, insistent inflections. The disease must have gotten to her in the time that she’s been dead to the world. And there are others, too, more of them speaking, words she thinks she catches only to realize she cannot comprehend them. 

 

And that cannot be Cosima’s voice she hears as she lies waiting for Mika, her meter and tone that Beth has come to know, because Cosima is not sick, not dead, _no fucking way_.

 

The voices have been there since before she recognized pain, light, hunger. But they have grown fainter the more lucid she feels herself become, and she can put two and two together. 

 

 

-

 

 

A closed casket, a private affair, small and simple, just like she’d vaguely mentioned in her last will and testament. It makes for slipping out of the casket relatively easy, after the funeral but before the burial, facilitated by Mika. 

 

Mika comes back at night, and Beth nearly tumbles from the casket as she heaves herself out of it, feeling Mika’s hand at her forearm, holding her up. She stands, and she’s surprised at how painless it all is, now. Relatively. Everything’s become a dull throb. She can deal with that.

 

“How do I look?” Beth asks in the darkness of the room with a sweep of her arms. She’s dressed in her Sunday best, and of course her mother would put her in a modest lilac dress. _Her mother. Her father._ Jesus Christ, she’d listened to them sob at her own funeral, and there’d been nothing she could do to comfort them. Beth bites her lip, watches Mika stare at her, unsure what to say, and speaks to fill the silence as quickly as possible, to move and stop _thinking_ so god damned much. “You’re supposed to say ‘like death warmed over’.”

 

Mika stares and stares, and finally laughs, a single sharp, loud sound, so different from the muted _whump_ as she turns, shuts the casket, and locks it closed. 

 

And there goes Beth Childs, March third, nineteen-eighty-four to present. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and all that other bullshit.

 

 

-

 

 

If Mika weren’t on her side, she’d be a little worried. 

 

“Papers,” Mika says, pointing to the glove compartment, and Beth leans forward, feels the seatbelt tug at her chest as she opens it, rifles through the things there to pull out an ID, passport, credit cards. “You’re Danielle Fournier now.” Mika swallows audibly, and Beth puts the items back, shuts the glove compartment’s door maybe harder than she really needs to. “We’re in Toronto, the name won’t draw too much suspicion,” Mika reasons, and Beth can’t argue with that, although it still feels grossly disrespectful to take over Danielle’s life like she’s about to. 

 

“Danielle,” Beth repeats. There are few people on the road with them so late at night, and Mika drives just right, not too slow and not too fast. _Move along, nothing to see here._ Beth rests her elbow on the windowsill, tilts her head down against her fist. “Danielle.” First Elizabeth, now this. “Couldn’t get any girlier than that.”

 

Mika snorts, gives her a look, and keeps driving. 

 

Mika’s new place is in the uglier part of town, but it means less people watching and so Beth feels herself relax as Mika leads her up the stairs, unlocks the door to an apartment, and lets them both inside. 

 

The first thing she does as Mika locks the door behind them is to, with difficulty, strip. Beth tugs the dress over her head, fabric slipping from her weak grip, arms and back complaining at the twists. But it’s off eventually, leaving her standing in the middle of Mika’s entryway in nothing but her underwear, and she holds it, unsure of what to do with the dress. 

 

Mika appears from her bedroom room, averts her eyes as she approaches and holds out clothing. “Pajamas,” she says needlessly, and Beth takes them, handing Mika the dress in return. 

 

When she’s slipped on the top and stepped into the sweatpants, Beth makes her way over to the couch, not sitting as much as collapsing on it. She’s had enough of lying and staring at the ceiling to last a lifetime, and so she turns onto her side, to lie and stare at the wall instead. Walking from the casket to Mika’s car to her apartment has worn her out. 

 

She hears Mika pad over to her, sit on the only available space, near her feet, and Beth draws her knees up, to give her more room.

 

“I’m assuming you don’t want to sleep.”

 

“No,” Beth grunts. But as torturous of a day as it’s been for her, it probably hasn’t been exactly easy for Mika, either. She looks over at her, out of the corner of her eye, but Mika’s own eyes are closed, head tilted back against the couch cushion, looking not at peace as much as exhausted. “Do you?” she asks. The last thing she wants to be is an ungrateful houseguest. 

 

“Not yet,” Mika says quietly, and so Beth heaves herself up agains the arm of the couch, body protesting every movement.

 

“Then tell me everything.”

 

 

-

 

 

There were incidents she’d brushed off her entire life. 

 

Three parallel lines, almost surgical against her thumb and welling instantly with fat beads of blood, when she had grabbed the wrong edge of her razor in the shower one morning, healed by dinner. Twinges of shin splints that lasted for all of four days, something she had known better by high school than to mention to her teammates, who sometimes passed entire seasons running on grass instead of the track because of them. The burn in her calves and thighs as she ran up one of San Francisco’s killer hills, nothing but a nagging ache as people dropped further and further behind her as she put more and more distance between herself and the starting line, twenty-six miles and three hundred and eighty five yards feeling like a walk in the park. 

 

And now, to add to that, the bruise she’s going to have on her knee from smacking into the rim of Mika’s tub.

 

“Beth?”

 

Her voice is high and tone concerned, and Beth lowers herself into the hot water with a sigh. “Just a bruise. I’m not drowning,” she calls, and she hears Mika make a noise of acknowledgment, hears her walk away. 

 

Beth sinks down up to her shoulders into the water, amused. Not quite up for a shower, Mika’d run the hot water for her, laid out a towel, clean clothes, taking care of her like some crazy-ass Bushido warrior. Maybe Mika would kick her out once she started to eat her out of house and home, because sitting around recuperating makes her _hungry_.

 

She uses Mika’s shampoo, her soap, her towels, her clothes, and soon enough she’s feeling a hell of a lot better and probably smelling like it, too. Beth looks at herself in the mirror as she drags a comb through knotted hair, teasing out tangles. Not a scratch. The bruised lip, the gash that had gone from her temple to her eyebrow - all gone. She’d expected some Frankenstein-esque scarring, at the least, and can’t say she’s not disappointed she doesn’t have one kick-ass scar to make up stories about.

 

She emerges from the steamy bathroom, tugs a hairband off her wrist and pulls her hair up into a loose knot, and Mika looks over her shoulder at her from the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind eggs,” she says, and Beth shakes her head, makes her way over to the counter that serves as a kitchen table and pulls up a barstool. 

 

“You don’t have to make me breakfast,” she says, though she takes the plate and cup of coffee Mika offers her.

 

The other woman shrugs, a half-smile on her face. “I was making some for me, anyway. And I wanted to.”

 

And Beth realizes how little she knows about Mika as Mika sits across from her, wide eyes looking anywhere but at her as they eat, forks clicking quietly against plates. Finnish. Good with computers. Rightfully paranoid. That’s about it. She’s not sure she’s even got the right to go there, but they are alone and together and no one is hunting them down, at last not at the moment, and it feels almost like a sleepover. Beth curls her hands around the cup of coffee, feeling the warmth soothe the ache in her fingers. 

 

“What was Niki like?”

 

She asks because Niki is her sister, too, in a way, and she’s sorry she wasn’t able to meet her. She is lucky, Beth realizes, at least when she puts things into perspective. By the skin of her teeth and with Mika’s help, she made it. But Niki didn’t. Danielle didn’t. Katja didn’t.

 

Mika sets down her fork, thinking before speaking. “She was always happy,” she says, and Beth nods, encouraging, as Mika stutters to a halt. She can see easily how the two of them would have gotten along, like yin and yang. “Everyone loved her.”

 

“Everyone, huh? She have a boyfriend?” Beth teases, singsong, knowing, because at times Mika is so transparent, and Mika must know this because she laughs, too.

 

“No. Didn’t want one,” she says firmly, and Beth pushes the coffee towards her, lets Mika take it, raise it to her lips and sip. 

 

“Funny how a lot of us don’t,” Beth says wryly, picking her fork back up and taking another bite of egg. “I wonder what Cosima’s got to say about that.”

 

 

-

 

 

Being benched would be more of a problem for her if resting for a day or two weren’t so fucking appealing, although now she should be counting time in weeks rather than days. There is so much to do and the others to warn, but she’s not ready to throw herself back into the fight just yet. Not if she wants to be of any use, to do it right, to stay hidden. 

 

While Mika’s out doing whatever it is she does, Beth spends her time pushing herself, grasping at the lintels of doorways, working her way slowly back up to being able to do a single chin-up; or walking around outdoors, not far from the apartment but enough to get her heart rate up, to get back some stamina; or browsing the aisles at the supermarket, coming back and making something for Mika that’s not dollar-ramen and instant rice.

 

Beth puts the groceries away, things going in the fridge and cupboards and the bowl on the counter where Mika keeps her fruit, and in doing so she finds that Mika’s home has not a single drop of alcohol in it, not one bottle of anything other than Advil. She wonders if Mika’s done it for her or if she lives like this, and decides she's grateful for either answer.

 

They’ve taken to sitting on the couch together at night, catching up on the news that Mika’s gleaned from the sidelines, making plans for when _this_ is all over, and talking about the past. More than once they’ve nodded off together, and Mika hardly sleeps in her bed. That has become an issue, though. 

 

“Mika, please,” Beth says, reaches out and grabs her wrist as Mika slips down to the floor. “The couch is big enough for the both of us. You don’t have to sleep on the floor.” It's _her_ home.

 

Mika looks at her uncertainly, but the floor must be as uncomfortable as it looks because she nods, grabs her pillow and blanket off of it and drags everything onto the fold-out couch bed. “Okay.”

 

After that it goes quiet, save for whatever’s playing on the television, and Beth really should have known this was coming sooner or later, because she’s put it in the back of her mind to deal with at some future time that will hopefully never come - _Please_ _don't leave_ _me. I need you._ Even though she knows it’s coming, the question is like a punch in the gut. 

 

Mika reaches up, brushes hair in front of her face and asks, quiet and hurt, “Why did you leave me?”

 

The harmony that comes so easily with Mika shatters, and Beth thinks before she speaks, because she better have a damned good explanation for this one. 

 

“I didn’t do it to leave you.” Talking through her feelings makes her feel like she’s eight years old again and at some sort of prissy tea party, and then there’s still so much she can’t tell her. But she owes as much of the truth as possible to Mika, and really so much more. “I did it to protect you.” Beth laughs, short. “Doesn’t that sound stupid? It was, though.” She turns toward Mika, reaches out and grabs her hand. She runs her thumb over the ridges of Mika’s knuckles, slow. “Before I jumped, I saw a woman who looked exactly like me.” 

 

“Sarah,” Mika offers, and Beth nods, smiles at the name. If Sarah had meddled any further, she’d have ended up cremated. And the credit cards Mika had gotten her had come in handy - her own had been maxed out. She and Sarah were going to have words, as soon as there was a spare moment.

 

It had been Sarah who had been there with her, she now knows, a casualty caught in the crossfire. She’d been distraught and defeated and knew exactly who Sarah was without knowing her name, and had only regretted that Sarah had had to see, had had to watch her push herself blindly toward the train before she could realize what she was doing and back out like a coward. The two of them will have words, and maybe Sarah will have something to say to her, too, for having put her through that. Beth swallows, and her voice wavers when she admits, “It was for you, and Cosima, and Alison and Katja and Danielle, and Sarah, too.”

 

It's impossible to tell if that satisfies Mika in any way because she gets up suddenly, pads to her room, and comes back and takes her place next to her on the couch again, holding something out. “They have new phones,” Mika explains abruptly, and Beth takes the slim phone from her. “This one’s yours.”

 

She opens it with the swipe of her thumb, no password protection yet, and brings up the contacts. They’re all there. “Do I want to know how you got their numbers?” Beth asks, glancing up, and the look Mika gives her is both guilty and defensive. 

 

“It’s not like it’s encrypted information.”

 

Beth snorts, slipping the phone into the pocket of her sweatpants. “We’ve got to hire you as our security consultant,” she jokes, but Mika doesn’t laugh.

 

“I… I texted Alison.”

 

The name nearly bowls her over, and Beth sits up straighter as she asks, “When?”

 

Mika sighs, shoulders slumping. “Yesterday.” She motions at Beth, at the phone that’s now disappeared into her pocket. “She hasn’t answered yet, last time I checked.”

 

She wants to swear - _Jesus fucking Christ, Mika, you can’t keep shit like that from me_ \- but that would make her a hypocrite and ungrateful to boot. “You probably spooked her,” Beth says with a shrug. “It’s alright. Maybe I should hit up Cosima first, anyway.” They’ve got to get a plan of attack ready, all of them, but damn if suddenly all she wants to do is see Alison.

 

She's been so focused on getting back into the fight, body thrumming with the need to  _move move move_ that that part of everything, the fun shit with Alison in their few moments alone before everything truly went to hell, has been suppressed. On purpose, no accident.  _You're a stone-cold bitch_ , she can almost hear Art say, laughing, more truth to their casual trading of insults than she'd like him to know. But she's got a job to do and she keeps fucking it up, and she's holding so many threads together that she no longer even knows where to start grasping as they all slip like water from between her fingers.

 

“Sorry - ” Mika starts quietly, but Beth shakes her head, breathing out hard. 

 

“Don’t. You’re fine, Mika.” She flops back comfortably against the couch, arms spread over the back of it. “Thank you, really, for the ice breaker,” she admits as Mika sits back, relaxing. “I don’t know what I would have said. ‘Hey, I’m back. You DTF?’”

 

It gets her a smile from Mika, one she’s glad to see, and they fall asleep on the couch watching some movie Mika puts on but that neither of them pay particular attention to, lost in thought, Mika’s head on her shoulder and fist curled into her shirt like she’s afraid she’s going to walk away again.

 

 

-

 

 

All good things come to an end, much too quickly for her nowadays, and Beth knows the next morning with certainty that she should get her ass up and out into the real world.

 

It starts out as a harmless enough dream. The aches and pains are almost all gone, though her joints seem to be taking their sweet time getting back to full capacity. She's half-awake and aware of the sheets winding around her legs as she kicks and twists restlessly, Mika sleeping somewhere next to her, and she can almost feel Alison helping her into a stretch, a hand high on her thigh, urging _just a little further, Beth._

 

She wakes up and takes a cold shower, and makes herself breakfast. Over cereal she reads through the texts on her new clone phone, picks up the thread of conversation that Mika has started, and finds that Mika's arranged for her to meet Alison at her home at eleven tonight. 

 

Somehow over the course of her stay some of her things have appeared, though not all of them. Watch. Wallet. Keys. Gun. The important stuff. Beth put her watch on and slips her wallet in her back pocket, and grabs the keys and gun off the counter, walks over to the couch where Mika still lies sleeping. “Mika?” she says quietly, and gives the other woman time to stir, to wake up and sit up, blankets around her shoulders as she looks at her blearily. 

 

“I’ll be back tonight, late, okay? But I’ll be back,” Beth promises. “I’m going home to get clothes, and then I've got shit to do,” she says, tucking her gun in the waistband of her borrowed jeans. She leaves it vague, and Mika doesn’t ask questions. Really, she probably already knows there’s housecleaning that needs to be done. “Don’t worry about me, alright? The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the word he didn’t get hit by a train.” 

 

Mika runs a hand through curly hair, either too tired or the two of them past the point of it - Beth sees the scars on her cheek, looks away and at her eyes as Mika speaks, always a question.

 

"Be careful?”

 

Beth laughs. She’d be a pretty shitty sister if Mika went through all this just for her to make some rookie mistake and blow it all her first day out of the house. “It’s not every day you come back from the dead,” Beth says, and the promise is an easy one to give, one she’s sure to keep. “I don’t intend to waste it.”   

 

 

 


End file.
